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lord-squiggletits · 2 years

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The thing about TFA is that I think it’s a pretty good Transformers cartoon, it’s fun and has interesting spins on the usual premises of TF. But I honestly don’t think it’s as deep as a lot of the fandom likes to act as it is.

Like, sure, in the show we have a few glimpses of Cybertron under Autobot rule and get inklings that this isn’t a pure and wholesome society. Except we literally don’t get anything besides that-- glimpses. All of the backstory that actually reveals the ~problematic~ and ~revolutionary~ things of the TFA continuity takes place solely in extra materials. And even if you could convince me that this is a valid way of telling a story (spoilers: NO because I shouldn’t have to buy multiple separate pieces of merchandise, half of which is shown via Word of God/meta texts and not actual story content, to be able to understand a single story), it honestly doesn’t make a difference. None of the extra material that shows the dark/gritty parts of TFA shows up in the cartoon itself.

It doesn’t matter that the flying twins were experimented on while on the verge of death because they sure don’t act like it matters. It doesn’t matter that the Decepticons apparently used to be enslaved as war machines, because the show sure as hell doesn’t give them any deeper characterization than “we’re gonna take over Cybertron because we’re the Decepticons raaaaawwwwrrr!” And it doesn’t even matter that Optimus Prime, one of the main characters of the show, is literally a high-ranking military officer of a regime that brainwashes/experiments on civilians, because as far as the story is concerned his biggest problems are 1. Trying to get his crew to listen to him 2. Fighting Decepticons 3. Putting up with his annoying superiors after he got kicked out of the Elite Guard. (Note that just because he didn’t make it in the Elite Guard doesn’t mean he’s not still important: Prime is one of the highest ranks the military has, and Optimus was given freaking Omega Supreme, a top secret war weapon/artifact, as his ship.)

The story is trying to pose itself as something deeper and more serious, but ultimately fails because those deeper/serious things are barely covered in the show or delegated to side materials.

Am I saying TFA is a terrible show that has no good ideas at all? Am I saying that people who like TFA are dumb and should watch another show? Not at all. I’m just saying that I think the fandom opinions of TFA as a show honestly overhypes it compared to the actual content of the show itself. Forget about the dark and gritty backstory, the vast majority of TFA is spent on human villains and random skirmishes on Earth instead of the actual interesting part, the Autobot/Decepticon war and the state of Cybertron!

If you want a TF continuity that has great lore (and doesn’t require you to watch a cartoon, read a book, find a bunch of old interviews, read a comic, and listen to a script reading at a con), IDW1 and IDW2 are both right there waiting for you. Especially IDW2, which is written as a single continuous story and not as the chaotic decade-and-a-half long mess that is IDW1.

#squiggposting #also another reason i dont really like fanon views of tfa is that like #the content for MOP and especially OP himself is so meh #people seem to think OP is like a crybaby twink who's the victim of constant bullying #and M is the one who swoops in like a romantic novel love interest to save him #in other words not even the content made by people who like the characters/ship #is something i'm interested in at all #nor is it really in character for that matter #it just seems to me like the reason people like TFA is because the material is scattered enough that they can just #cobble together whatever headcanons they want and create the story that they want in their head #and the cartoon itself doesn't contradict them because the cartoon is just a simplistic good guys vs bad guys #with some hints at something deeper that never get explored #i know some people like the 'sandbox of headcanons' or whatever but like #if a piece of media doesn't have substance on its own #and isnt well crafted or coherent on my own #then why would i care about it enough to be interested #the cartoon can't even tell a story standing on its own so why should i have to do all the work of making the story work #there's a difference between leaving things to the imagination vs straight up leaving things out of the story #the difference between making inferences and theories that enrich the already existing story #versus the story itself being fragmented incomplete and tbh a little boring and you having to rewrite it in your mind to make it interesting #anyways that's my spiel for the day

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fdelopera · 7 months

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Yo Gentiles! Looks like I'm going to need to give some of you a crash course on what antisemitic language looks like, because I've been seeing entirely too much of it from some of you here on Tumblr.

Now, I think it's time for a Jewish history lesson, because I've been seeing way too many Nazi-related conspiracy theories going around. If you hear contradictions to the basic information that I am about to share (i.e., if you hear someone saying that the Jewish people are "a race that originated in Europe"), it is likely that you are hearing a white supremacist, anti-Jewish conspiracy theory.

So, here's the basics of Jewish history. Jews are indigenous to the Levant have been there for thousands of years. The Levantine people that Jews descended from have been in that area of the Levant since the Bronze Age. Jews as a distinct people have been there since the Late Bronze Age. Before it was Palestine it was the Kingdom of Judah, then Judea, and then Judaea, and that is literally where we are from. The word Jew means "a person from the Kingdom of Judah." The Romans renamed the area Syria-Palaestina (which they borrowed from the Greek name Palestina) in the 2nd century CE after destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem and leading another campaign to try to eradicate the Jewish people (guess what, we're still here, motherfuckers).

And even after the Romans tried to annihilate us, even after they scattered many of us into European diaspora, many Jews came back, again and again over the ages, and there have nearly always been Jewish communities in the region throughout history.

And if you come for me or try to dispute any of this history with white supremacist bullshit, I am a Jew who has studied way more Jewish history than you. And as politely as possible, you can take your white supremacist conspiracy theories and fuck off into the sun.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let's get into it!

Gloves are coming off, because this is just a sampling of the Nazi dogwhistles I've been seeing here on Tumblr about the Jewish civilians who were tortured, murdered, and worse:

- If you say shit like, "The Jews got what they deserved"...

GUESS WHAT? You're talking like a white supremacist, and you need to fucking check yourself.

- And if, on the other hand, you say shit like, "The reports were probably overblown. I think those were paid actors. I don't think those Jews were murdered. No Jewish children were killed. No Jewish bodies were desecrated" blahblahblah...

GUESS WHAT? You get to sit with the Nazis at their table for lunch.

- If you tell Jews "go back to Europe where you came from"...

GUESS WHAT? Not only are you telling the descendants of Jewish refugees to go back to the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, and the Nazi gas chambers, as I explained in this post, but you are also repeating a white supremacist conspiracy theory about the origins of European Jews.

Jews are a Levantine people from the area of the Middle East currently called Israel (formerly called the Kingdom of Judah, and then Judea). While there was some emigration to Europe during the late Roman Republic and the early days of the Roman Empire, the first mass migration of Jews to Europe was a forced migration. Gentiles from the Roman Empire dragged us there as captives after 70 CE, the year Rome destroyed the Second Temple.

- And if you're telling yourself that there are "good Jews" and "bad Jews," and those Jewish civilians were "bad Jews," so they deserved to be tortured and killed...

GUESS WHAT? You're spouting white supremacist ideology.

Antisemitism takes a long time to deprogram.

A lot of gentiles grow up with anti-Jewish ideology that they have never questioned.

And a lot of Christians are kept ignorant about Jewish history because preachers and priests fear it would make Christians question the many inaccuracies in the Bible.

But the first step in noticing antisemitic beliefs is to notice when you start singling people out *because* they are Jewish.

And I have been seeing some of you gleefully celebrating the murder of Jewish civilians *because* they are Jewish.

And that is antisemitism.

That is one step closer to the next generation of Jews getting shoved into the gas chambers. And there are only 16 million of us left in the entire world. We're 0.2% of the world's population. And we cannot afford another Holocaust.

And if your response to me saying that is, "Well, those Jews deserve it."

Guess what. You are making it easier for Nazis and white supremacists to spread hatred and commit acts of violence against Jewish people. And you will have to live with that blood on your conscience.

So...

If you are a gentile, and you see other gentiles repeating these kinds of white supremacist dogwhistles about Jewish people, here's how you can help:

1. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Help them direct their focus away from attacking random Jewish people online and towards helping Palestinians.

Actions that people can take right now are contributing to verified charities and relief organizations that help the people of Gaza. Some organizations that are verified by CharityNavigator.org and CharityWatch.org are:

Anera (92% rating on Charity Navigator)

Palestine Children's Relief Fund (97% rating on Charity Navigator)

Doctors Without Borders (98% on Charity Navigator)

2. Call that shit out. Tell people that they're being antisemitic, and explain that Jew-hatred is dangerous to Jewish people. Antisemitism gets Jews attacked and it gets Jews killed. In the US, many synagogues require round the clock security to protect against white supremacists who want to murder Jews. In Pittsburgh, my old home town, a group of Nazis from north of the city planned the murder of Jewish congregants at Tree of Life Synagogue, and so far only one of them (the gunman) has been arrested and convicted of the murders. The others are still at large.

3. Explain to them that it is antisemitic to celebrate someone's death *because* they're Jewish. ALSO, it is antisemitic to blame a random Jewish person for the actions of ANY government, whether that be the Israeli Government or the US Government.

4. Explain to people that they're not going to solve this conflict by posting antisemitic statements and memes online. All they will do is alienate the Jewish people in their lives and make those Jews feel scared and unsafe. And they will contribute to this current wave of antisemitism.

Antisemitic hatred doesn't help Palestinians. All it does is put Jewish people around the world in danger.

#tl;dr if you celebrate the murder of jews *because* they are jews you are an antisemite - end of story #just fyi - i will be monitoring the comments so if anyone posts anything antisemitic i will delete your comment and block you #antisemitism tw #jumblr

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7amaspayrollmanager · 5 months

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I think what israelis and zionists do well is that they hyperfocus on random discourse and make generalizations that imply that people in solidarity with palestine are ridiculous and stupid. An example is when they jumped on the spotify wrapped discourse that went around: "How stupid pro Palis dont know that this is the time spotify wrapped drops every year." But me, a palestinian, didn't believe that theory nor fucking cared and many of us didnt. Another one theyve been focusing on is the "whos indigenous" discourse. And they conflate the movement for palestine with this meaningless disfourse instead of a movement to...free Palestine

meanwhile they deliberately erase the Palestinian presence in those protests in the discourse. Without palestinians being a literal diaspora, alot of these protests would not have been organized without Palestinians. I can't stand the "westerners are only protesting because they're uneducated" because who's in the west? Palestinians exist in the west. "All these white leftists know nothing" what about Palestinian leftists? We care about our homeland we are organizing to end the colonization and occupations of our homeland. Israelis always dismiss Palestinians in not just their experiences but their literal presence.

It's interesting because they hold themselves to a higher standard so anyone disagreeing with them just doesn't know what they know and theyll claim things like "only Palestinians and Israelis can speak about Palestine" but dismiss all palestinian perspectives that directly contradict their "knowledge" as anti semitic.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

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Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

#pluralistic #mark zuckerberg #meta #enshittification #facebook #twitter #elon musk #billionaires #follies #failing up #metaverse #steins law #big tech #technofeudalism

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ineffable-endearments · 8 months

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When you (generic, universal) talk about theories about the end of Season 2 and Aziraphale going to Heaven, you often run up against either:

taking everything at face value to the point of ignoring that some details contradict one another

accidentally nullifying major emotional, plot, and character beats by implying that they Didn't Really Happen.

A lot of the differences in analyses, especially ones that I like (LOL), can be explained by the fact that we're analyzing a character who is experiencing massive cognitive dissonance and believes a number of contradictory things at once.

Nobody is wrong to point out Aziraphale's need to Belong to a Good Cause, which makes his acceptance of the Supreme Archangel position entirely in-character; nobody is wrong to point out Aziraphale's anxiety around the Metatron, which indicates that he may have been coerced.

Did Aziraphale go back to Heaven because he's afraid of what will happen if he keeps refusing, or because the Metatron made an implicit threat? Did he go back to Heaven because he's vulnerable to flattery and wants to feel important? Did he go back to Heaven because he thought it would be a way to be permanently safe with Crowley? Or did he go back because he missed belonging to something Good, something bigger than himself? All of the above. It's all of them.

Yes, even though it's incredibly dissonant to believe a system that he KNOWS is dangerous and coercive can accomplish true Goodness, that is in fact his belief.

Admittedly, this is no one I follow - just random comments I see around from people I don't know very well - but it seems like some people out there are assuming Aziraphale can't possibly be making any plans to do anything remotely intelligent, because this would mean that he is already aware that Heaven is bad and would therefore leave no room for character growth.

Except no, that's not necessarily what it means. In fact, the cognitive dissonance is the main thing he is going to have to resolve. Having that dissonance - the belief that Heaven's ideals are genuine, along with the understanding that Heaven is dangerous and needs to be carefully manipulated - is what will move his plot forward. Mindless obedience wouldn't progress his story any more than magic brainwashing coffee would, and it would be equally inconsistent with his story and motivations so far.

The dissonance is the point. And part of the dissonance is that he already knows Heaven is dangerous - he just hasn't accepted what that means yet. It would make sense for him to simultaneously try to work within Heaven's system and watch his own back.

Also, only partly related: Neil might write a story about how the worst people exploit the need to belong and to be Good. He might write a story about how we have to become our own greater good. He might write a story about how to rebuild after you discover your greater good is not so great or good after all. He is not going to write a story about how having any faith or trust in something objectively bigger and stronger than yourself makes you a stupid clown who is wrong about literally everything and shouldn't have even tried.

Let Aziraphale fuck up. He needs to and he will. Whatever plans he was making in that elevator won't actually succeed. But give him credit where it's due.

Edited to add: And you know what? When he fucks up, he's going to get through it. And then he's going to do the right thing. And he's going to get it right when it matters the most.

#good omens #good omens 2 spoilers #go s2 spoilers #aziraphale #I am like SO SENSITIVE about Aziraphale because look #during the Final Fifteen he is the one saying the more hurtful things #and he is the one being misled back to an objectively bad place #but he is trying SO SO HARD #and I see myself in how incredibly hard he's trying

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svsss-fanon-exposed · 4 months

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Examining SVSSS Canon: 1/∞

SHEN YUAN'S PIDW-READING TIMELINE

One question and argument that comes up frequently in SVSSS fandom is, how long did Shen Yuan read PIDW for? Was he following it from early serialization, or did he simply binge everything toward the end?

This question isn't exactly one that is easy to answer either-- considering that there are actually various direct quotes that could be read in contradiction to one another regarding it.

Based on the information in the novel, we are left with several potential theories as to Shen Yuan's reading timeline. In this post, I will be presenting these theories, along with supporting evidence from the novel.

Theory #1: Shen Yuan picked up PIDW and binge-read it from beginning to end for the first time in 20 days before dying

This theory is directly supported with a quote:

He’d spent twenty days binging the novel from start to finish, so he had clean forgotten that whump-filled arc of pointless abuse that covered Luo Binghe’s beginnings at the sect, okay?! (7 Seas, Ch. 1)

In the original text, this line is 他可是看了二十天才看完的. Broken down, this is literally "he indeed read it (他可是看了), it took him twenty days (二十天才）to read the whole [novel] (看完的)."

*note 可是 may also be equivalent to "however" or "but" in some circumstances, but is generally used to provide emphasis.

However, depending on where one puts the emphasis and pairs syllables in the last part, there could be different interpretations. If read as 看完的 it implies "read the entire thing," but if read as 看完的，it implies "finished reading." I read it the first way, but I don't know if that is the "most correct," so there is some ambiguity there.

It is also implied later that PIDW was already very long and full of plot holes when he began reading it:

So, if back when he’d just opened this baffling book, this Proud Immortal Demon Way, which was so full of landmines that it was practically high art, to the point that those landmines had become its very style... He would definitely have grabbed the brick that was the entire fifty-volume set and showed them what their brains looked like when splattered across the ground. (7 Seas, Ch. 21)

Though this could be related to the final length of the novel, and the "fifty-volume set" is likely exaggeration or metaphor. In one of his forum posts, he also says:

I understand what OP is feeling. I’ve been reading this novel lately, and it’s so damn long—long and pumped full of filler... ...All my fellow readers have already roasted the setting for the last three hundred thousand words, so I won’t say more on that. (7 Seas, Ch. 26)

This part where he says he has been reading the novel lately, implies that he began not too long ago, rather than following it for years. Of course, Airplane already at this point finds his username and comments familiar:

His eyes automatically highlighted that familiar ID “Peerless Cucumber.” (7 Seas, Ch. 26)

So it could also be said that he is downplaying his dedication with that statement. He does, however, state that the other readers have roasted the setting, but doesn't mention that he himself has done so. Additionally, the "three-hundred thousand words" mentioned may refer to the comment section, not the novel itself, so there is still some ambiguity to that point.

Theory #2: Shen Yuan has been reading PIDW long-term throughout serialization

There are multiple quotes directly supporting this theory:

He could guarantee it on all the youth and frustrations he’d wasted following this twenty-million-word-plus serialization for years. (7 Seas, Ch. 6)

and

Everything that had happened before was as unto smoke. From today forth, as he walked the jianghu, he would use this ID, which had been plastered all over the comments section for years. (7 Seas, Ch. 9)

The second quote may refer to comments sections on Zhongdian literature in general, but the first one is more directly referring to PIDW. There is a slim but unlikely possibility that he referrs to the years he has spent within the PIDW universe, rather than just reading the novel. That possibility is made even less likely by the following quote:

Next, let a veteran reader of this novel, Shen Yuan, omit the countless fanservice-y details and concisely summarize the million-word epic for everyone… (7 Seas, Ch. 1)

Where it refers to him as a veteran reader of PIDW specifically (and this TL is consistent with the original implications). It's unlikely for him to be referred to as a veteran reader if he had only been reading the novel for twenty days.

As one can see, if you go by either of the above theories, there are direct conflicts and contradictions, and arguments to be made either way. This could be written off as inconsistency. However, there are two additional options and theories which can resolve those conflicts.

Theory #3: Shen Yuan had been a casual reader of PIDW for years, but rushed to finish reading it through to the end in 20 days

One possibility is that Shen Yuan had been reading PIDW casually over several years, but wasn't caught up by the time his death drew near. Shen Yuan's cause of death is a matter for another post, so I won't discuss it here, but the following quote lends some support to this reading:

“Dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel!” With his dying breath, Shen Yuan spat this final curse. Who could have imagined that an upstanding young man like him—who had properly purchased the website’s VIP currency and read the novel’s official version—would find himself persevering before his untimely death to finish a novel so stallion, so money-grubbing and overly padded, that it left him speechless with rage? How could he not curse? (7 Seas, Ch. 1)

Here, it seems that Shen Yuan may have been aware of his upcoming death, and so he may have wanted to hurry and finish reading the novel before he died. In the original text, the phrase is: 临终之前坚持看完的, which can be broken down as "before his untimely/sudden death (临终之前), he persisted to finish reading [the novel] (坚持看完的）, though this may also be read as "he persisted in reading the entire novel," depending on how one puts emphasis in the sentence (same issue as the first quote in theory 1). 临终 means literally "near the end," but is a term for death or one's deathbed. Another way to translate 临终之前 would be "before meeting his end."

So, because he was persisting/persevering in finishing the novel (either the whole thing or just to the end), it may be that he expected his incoming death, or that he simply wished to persist in reading the novel to its end and his death still occured unexpectedly.

坚持 implies some level of urgency or steadfastness, but it may not refer to reading the novel quickly, but simply dedication to slogging through all of the bad porn and reading it to the end, rendering this theory a bit shaky.

Theory #4: Shen Yuan had been reading PIDW since early serialization, but re-read the entire thing in the 20 days before his death

This theory would resolve all potential conflicts-- making it true that he both followed PIDW's serialization for years and read the whole novel in 20 days. As to why he re-read the full novel, perhaps it was because the final chapter had been posted or was coming up, and he wished to reread from the start in preparation for that-- this could also drive him into an even greater rage about the contents of the novel and how repetitive and filler-heavy it is, as this would become more and more obvious on a binge-reread from start to end.

One weakness in this theory, though (pointed out by @verycharismaticdragon) is that if he read it twice, it would be less likely for him to completely forget details as mentioned in the first quote. Not entirely impossible-- one can still forget details even after multiple read-throughs, but just less likely to completely forget.

Theory #5: When Shen Yuan began reading PIDW, he binged all available chapters in twenty days, before following it consistently afterwards.

(theory courtesy of @verycharismaticdragon)

While this would not be particularly likely if the quote from theory 1 and the quote from theory 3 were linked together, those two quotes don't necessarily have to be linked-- it's possible that Shen Yuan would have binged the entire novel as it was at the time he found it in twenty days, then decided to continue reading as it updated, persisting and persevering because he wanted to reach the end despite the novel's trashiness, and then ended up dying.

Particularly, this makes a lot of sense in the context of the following quote:

Even though this famous Lord Cucumber spewed criticism constantly and without end in “Great Master” Airplane’s comments sections, his subscription payments and demands for updates never waned. (7 Seas, Ch. 26)

If Shen Yuan hadn't been caught up with the novel (as theory 3 would state) then it wouldn't make quite so much sense for him to be demanding updates, and if he hadn't been reading it for even a full month, there was no reason for him to make consistent subscription payments.

*******

Ultimately, which theory you choose to believe depends somewhat on the way you view canon-- whether the seemingly contradicting statements were intentional, or whether they were merely a consistency error.

These are the only theories that I can think of, but feel free to add any additional theories + support quotes and analysis if you have them!

One final note, in regards to WHEN DID SHEN YUAN START READING?

If it's true that Shen Yuan began reading PIDW earlier in serialization, how early was that point? Was he reading it from the beginning, or did he start later?

I personally believe it was later. Though he says he was following the novel for years, that could mean anywhere from two to four years since the total serialization of PIDW took place over four years:

How could someone who’d cursed “dumbfuck author, dumbfuck novel” remember ancient content from the beginning of a serialized novel that had been running for four years and covered an in-narrative span of two hundred years? (7 Seas, Ch. 1)

While it's hard to place exactly when he started reading, it seems that Shen Yuan began to read PIDW before the Immortal Alliance Conference arc, as he discusses the novel's online performance before that point:

Before this event, Proud Immortal Demon Way’s performance online had been steadfastly lukewarm. But once the Immortal Alliance Conference Arc debuted, the reviews, comments, subscriptions, and tips all soared into the heavens. It wasn’t only because from that point forward, “Great Master” Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky abandoned the last of his already minimal moral principles... there was another important “it” factor. It was, in fact, the main element that had first compelled Shen Qingqiu to follow the novel until the end. The demonic beasts! (7 Seas, Ch. 4)

It also seems that he wasn't entirely dedicated to reading the novel before then. However, he may have caught up with the serialization a bit later-- for example, if he started reading just before the conference, he would have known that it was a little-known novel before, and been able to watch the rise in popularity in real time even if he himself hadn't caught up to the conference just yet, before only deciding to dedicate to reading the full novel once he caught up to that part.

There are many possibilities and uncertainties in regards to Shen Yuan's reading timeline, but I do think there is enough information here to form decently solid theories-- so I will leave it to my readers to decide, now that the information has been presented, which ones they think are most likely and which they wish to use in their analysis.

#canon examined #svsss #shen yuan #pidw #super interested to see the debate on this post #i know i didn't include every single quote #but i did try to get the most relevant ones #i can't definitively say my chosen theory is the be all end all correct one since it depends so much on reader opinion re: consistency #but hopefully people can decide for themselves what fits best #anyway-- new post type debut!#updated

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autolenaphilia · 11 months

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Transandrophobia isn’t real because misandry isn’t real. This is the basic truth of the matter.

The very structure of the word implies some kind of intersection of transphobia and misandry, which is impossible, because again misandry doesn’t exist. The phrase “transandrophobia” exists as a transmasc counterpart to transmisogyny, and it doesn’t work, because while misogyny is real, misandry/androphobia is not. The things that are described as “transandrophobia” which are actual instances of oppression are better explained as plain transphobia.

The antifeminism of transandrophobia theory

“Transandrophobia” theory often launders antifeminist concepts of misandry. Of course this is openly often denied. The defense is that transandrophobia doesn’t imply that misandry exists, but only describes transphobia directed at transmascs.

And it’s often disingenuous. I’ve come across numerous transandrophobia blogs that clearly believe in misandry. The very coiner of the word, says it’s caused by “the effects of irrational fears of masculinity and manhood“ (taking “androphobia” quite literally) which implies both the existence of misandry and also misogynistically dismissing women’s fears of men’s violence as irrational.

Of course they change the language around, using euphemisms for misandry. In fact transandrophobia is a clear evolution of the term “transmisandry.” Genderkoolaid and ey’s idea of “anti-masculism” that I criticized here is maybe the most obvious example of that on tumblr today.. The belief in some kind of systemic force that “negatively impacts men and masculine people on the basis of their manhood and/or masculinity.“ to quote genderkoolaid is as succinct a definition of misandry theory as any. And ey even outright admits that “antimasculism” is just another word for misandry. Other transandrophobia bloggers like the transunity blog outright use the word “misandry.”So for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use “misandry” for whatever euphemisms transandrophobia people use, like “antimasculism”, “androphobia” or claims that “society hates men” or “there is a widespread irrational fear of men and masculinity.”

The use of feminist language like “patriarchy” common among transandrophobia people is either severely confused or outright dishonest. It’s a symptom of the terrible understanding of feminism on this site, as I lamented before. Patriarchy as a term that inherently implies male privilege, men are privileged for being men, not disadvantaged. Claiming the patriarchy oppresses men on the basis of their gender is a contradiction in terms. And belief in misandry is inherently misogynistic and anti-feminist.

How terms for systemic oppression actually work

Let’s however assume that the word “transandrophobia” just means “transphobia aimed at transmascs.” Then I don’t see why this word needs to exist. It contradicts most academic work on systemic oppression. New terms are generally not made just to describe “specific experiences of an oppression”. Instead they are created to describe meaningful intersections of different forms of oppression. Often these are intersections with misogyny, because that particular oppression affects about half the population. So misogynynoir describes an intersection of anti-blackness/racism and misogyny that black women experience, and lesbophobia describes an intersection of homophobia and misogyny that lesbians experience. And transmisogyny describes an intersection of misogyny and transphobia that trans women and transfems experience.

The lesbophobia example is especially pertinent to this discussion. The homophobia that gay men experience is often distinct from that lesbians experience, and homophobia against gay men is no minor prejudice, gay men have literally been murdered for being gay. Yet there is no “homoandrophobia” (to borrow an argument from this post by catgirlforeskin) and that’s because misandry/androphobia isn’t real. Men experience systemic oppression differently from women experiencing the same oppression, but that’s because of the absence of misogyny, not the existence of any misandry.

So a word like transandrophobia does imply an intersection between “androphobia/misandry”and transphobia. Otherwise it doesn’t have much reason to exist.

Misandry must affect all men in order to exist

I have seen claims that while “cis misandry” doesn’t exist, trans men and transmasc people are in fact oppressed for being men or masculine. And that’s how transandrophobia works

But that’s just transphobia. Misandry can only be real if it affects all men. Misogyny is a viable term because all women are oppressed for being women, even if they can also be privileged because of things like being cis, wealthy or white which balances out their oppression for being women (intersectionality is complex). I wouldn’t claim misogyny was real if it only affected a subset of women.

You can’t claim that men are oppressed for being men or being masculine, that it is some stigmatized gender or gender expression, when being a man and specifically a masculine man is what is expected of about half the population, and in fact men gain privilege for the successful performance of masculinity.

It’s true that trans men and other transmascs are systemically oppressed, and do indeed experience severe pushback if they express their manhood or try to transition in a transmasculine direction. But that’s because they are trans. Transfems experience a similar oppression for expressing their womanhood or trying to transition in transfeminine direction. That’s why the word transphobia exists.

Let’s make an example of a common bit of rhetoric among transandrophobia people, and see how it is all explained entirely by transphobia. Transandrophobia people talk about some general “hatred of testosterone” as part of transandrophobia, often dishonestly conflating transfems expressing their dysphoria with transphobic rhetoric about how testosterone ruins transmasc bodies.

But any idea about society hating testosterone fail to account for why the testosterone flowing through bodies deemed naturally male is seen as okay. In fact being “high-t” is seen as a positive in a man. It’s not even a prejudice against medical testosterone, being “low-t” is a fad disorder that cis men can easily get testosterone prescriptions for. And trying to lower your “natural testosterone” levels is something that’s actively hindered and gatekept, something I’ve experienced. I waited three years to get on t-blockers due to medical gatekeeping. In my country Sweden getting your balls removed legally and thus permanently lower your t-levels is something you have to petition the government for, something I’m trying to do.

Any kind of theorizing about a misandristic hatred of testosterone can’t explain this. It’s only so-called “cross-sex hormones” that are seen as bad, not testosterone in itself. And this is entirely explained by transphobia, not misandry.

It’s of course true that men are oppressed, but it’s never on the basis of being men. People who try to argue for misandry often use (often appropriatively) the struggles of oppressed men and try to argue they are oppressed because they are men. And transandrophobia theory is no different.

“Deserving a word”

The attitude among the transmascs who support transandrophobia theory seems to be “transfems have transmisogyny to describe their oppression, we deserve a word too.” Except again, transfems don’t have the term transmisogyny because we are very special girls who need a special word for our oppression, it exists because it describes the intersection of misogyny and transphobia we experience. It exists for the same reason as lesbophobia does, to describe an intersection between misogyny and another oppression. Gay men are not disadvantaged compared to lesbians because they “only” have the more general term “homophobia” while lesbians have the more specific word “lesbophobia.” And I don’t think transmascs would be disadvantaged if nobody accepted transandrophobia as a tern for their experiences.

You don’t need a specific word to talk about your experiences with transphobia, just as gay men don’t need a world like lesbophobia to talk about their experiences with homophobia. You can just talk about them, and use the word “transphobia” as a label for it.

And sometimes acknowledging that our experiences of oppression can be similar is useful for solidarity and community building. All trans people are negatively affected by transphobia, and that is the real “transunity.” theory.

Don’t end up like nothorses who once unironically listed “Misgendering over the phone,“ as an example of transandrophobia/transphobia only affecting transmascs.

Words exist in a context

Transandrophobia clearly exists as some transmasc counterpart to the transfem transmisogyny. It was even more obvious when the word was “transmisandry.” Words always exist in a context, and is often built by binaries. How someone who believes it defines transandrophobia does say a lot about how they define transmisogyny.

I’ve already described how if transandrophobia merely means “transmascs specific experiences with transphobia” it doesn’t have much reason to exist. But it also by implication diminishes and reduces transmisogyny. If transandrophobia only means “the transphobia experienced by transmasculine people”, transmisogyny is reduced by implication to only meaning “transphobia experienced by transfeminine people.” It’s another symptom of how tumblr discourse is uninterested in acknowledging misogyny, and in this case that misogyny is intersecting with transphobia in transmisogyny.

And well, if transmisogyny means “an intersection between transphobia and misogyny experienced by transfems” it does imply that transandrophobia also should describe an intersection, for why else does it exist. And we are back to it describing an imaginary intersection between transphobia and misandry, a misogynistic and antifeminist idea.

Who gets to define their own oppression?

Of course I am a trans woman, and I will of course get accused of hating transmascs, and robbing them of their ability to define their own oppression.

I would be more sympathetic to this argument, if transandrophobia theorists didn’t keep on constantly defining transmisogyny as the result of misandry. It is common in these circles for transmascs to reject any tme/tma distinction too. Literally going “I got mistaken for a trans woman once, that means I’m affected by transmisogyny.” There is absolutely zero respecting transfems rights to define their own oppression in transandrophobia circles, so why should I respect theirs?

Seriously, the “transmisogyny is actually misandry” claim just keeps happening. Genderkoolaid did it, the transunity blog too, and this dude who I literally found by browsing the “transmisogyny” tag spewing his misandry nonsense.

The problem with “transmisogyny is misandry, actually” is that misandry isn’t real, men are privileged for being men. Transfems experience oppression because we reject being men and performing masculinity. Men are in fact our oppressor class. When transmisogynists talk derisively about “men who wear dresses and say they are women”, they aren’t saying that being a man is bad (in fact they are often men themselves), it’s that “being amab and rejecting masculinity and manhood and claiming to be a woman is bad.” Its an intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

“Transandrophobia” is seldom just talking about the difficulties of being transmasc, it wants to redefine how transfems think about their oppression as well. And it does so in misgendering and transmisogynistic ways.

The transandrophobia theorists generally ignore the existence of transmisogyny, especially in queer communities. In fact it often implies or outright states that transfems are privileged in the trans/queer communities for being women or feminine, which is bizarre. In reality, Transmisogyny is rife in queer spaces, with “crazy trans woman syndrome” being common.

And it’s not like transandrophobia discourse is immune to that particular syndrome. Transmisogyny-exempt privilege dynamics remain very much in play. Transfems tend to get accused of being transandrophobic. The accusations are framed as “lateral aggression” not oppression, although the tone of these posts suggests “lateral aggression” is another polite euphemism word swap game like misandry for “androphobia.”

It feels like the antifeminist, and specifically anti-transfeminist roots of the whole transandrophobia idea coming to the forefront.

#my writings #transmisogyny #misandry is not real

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yanderenightmare · 5 months

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I have an honest question and I don't want to sound rude or anything at all but what's so interesting about CNC. Like I see people hype it up but to me it just feels like romanticizing r4pe..I'm not really into CNC so I can't talk bad or downplay whatever they do but I'm just asking because I want to understand it better.

A question I, by no means, can answer perfectly. However, in the spirit of philosophy and amateur psychology, I will lay unto you, ye who have keen ears, my theories.

Now, I am in no way a psychiatrist. However, as I am a woman who does a great deal of fantasizing and further thinking of what I fantasize about, I thought I might assume the role of a sexologist as it is no protected title.

I’ve long wondered why we (women) fantasize about things that would appall us if manifested in reality. It makes little sense that an act so ruining in practice should make us feel fulfilled when the mere thought of it is humored.

In the vast complexities of psychology, no matter how much I drink of its depths, I can’t seem to get my fill enough to understand it. Trying to figure out female arousal is like pulling hair from a clogged gutter and trying to undo all the knots. It’s a web of contradictions.

However…

First theory – there are cultural reasons. If we accept the inbuilt instincts of old and the instincts we adopt through media while growing up – all in all, the great history of aggressive men dominating passive women – we are conditioned to accept that this is what romance looks like.

Second theory – there are the emotional reasons. The "Beauty and the Beast" motif – featuring classic co-dependency. Women submit to abuse because we have an inbuilt need to nurture others – so when we love men who require to abuse and own us in order to love us, we somehow forget to protect ourselves in favor of loving them, which in this case means allowing them to abuse and own us. It's warped.

Third theory – there are psychological reasons. In fantasies and writing or viewing, we get to reframe traumatic experiences in a positive light or rework traumatic experiences in a safe environment – a form of psychological self-defense, much like Stockholm Syndrome or a type of self-inflicted Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Fourth theory – research has also been conducted regarding physiological reasons. Here, we have another inbuilt self-defense mechanism – a seldom talked-about phenomenon – which shows that women tend to become physically aroused when they sense any possibility of sexual aggression in their environment – in order to lower their chance of injury if they are raped.

Through all this, I believe one can narrow fantasies of rough or non-consensual sex into something as paradoxical and polar as having a wish for control and a wish to relent oneself of it. And coming to this conclusion, I realized that such is the pursuit of many, even in endeavors not of the erotic kind.

Humans wish to have control just as much as humans disdain having control. This is why BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, masochism) kinks and fetishes are found in some shape or form in nearly every romantic or sexual relationship in existence. You’ll have the dominant partner wishing to achieve control over a submissive partner wishing to relinquish control through such means of domination, humiliation, pain, and pleasure.

But it’s more complex than that, isn’t it?

Yes. Because, contradictory – a submissive partner may wish for control, and a dominant partner may wish to lose it. Human beings are an unyielding paradox where we flex across contrasting aims with no means to an end.

Yes, we wish for control, yet disdain having it. Perhaps we find the answer to this paradox in maintaining control by losing it?

Moreover… how does this relate to nonconsensual sex fantasies?

Here, we get a fifth theory containing the ego – a spin-off of a kind from the third theory. Here we find the wish for control, where, in the lustful fantasy realm, non-consensual sex bolsters a woman's feelings of seductiveness and desirability in the way it has the power to make a man lose his decency and self-control, driving him to commit crimes of passion despite ill consequences of losing his pride and honor as a man – also, ultimately, risking getting sent to prison.

Put simply, some women enjoy the idea of being irresistible enough to drive even a good man crazy. The thought of being attractive enough to make a man love-sick and the power and control that follows it is, in this case, a turn-on.

A sixth theory – another spin-off from the third theory – is that fantasies of rape allow women to reduce the distress associated with sex, as they are not, in this scenario, responsible for what occurs. Moreover, the logic here states that when one is forced into something, they’ll have a lesser need to feel guilt or shame about acting out their own sexual desires.

Put simply, some women wish to maintain their innocence despite having carnal desires only satiated by means of sinful acts.

This begs another question.

Is this a lingering feeling of guilt and shame around female sexuality?

Of course! Women are constantly met with disdain when open about their sluttiness.

So, are fantasies of nonconsensual sex a type of projection they do because of this?

In some cases, yes!

Transferring our own sexual desires unto another gives us permission to act them out without feeling guilty or dirty – because, inside this fantasy, it isn’t us committing the indecencies.

... Okay then...

Summing up theories five and six:

Control. To feel wanted, lusted for, obsessed over, and coveted by others. The power of driving someone to lovesick desire, a frenzied state, where they would do anything, even illegal, to have you. Additionally, despite such harsh cases of ego, wanting none of the responsibility for it, wanting to be free of sin, to maintain innocence and purity in light of such dark desires.

Or is there a seventh theory? One found in our idyllic construct of freedom – this aimless goal of ours to make ourselves appreciate breathing – done by balancing the electric powerline between having and losing control.

Is it this act of switching places, the attraction and pull, the stimuli and response, the attack and retaliation? In the chaos of contradictions and uncertainty, we find a thrill that occupies our otherwise hibernating minds – bored to the degree that we become machines in our daily programs.

Is it simply that we need a little extremity as a remedy for our dull lives?

Do we fall in love with illegal things simply because we are denied them? Simply because they’re illegal? Self-harm, drug use, gambling, murder, rape…

Are these things a part of us? And are we, without them, left feeling unfulfilled? Is The Purge perhaps onto something vitally important? A cure for boredom, this mediocrity that leaves us feeling so blue?

I think, if I were to find a comparison, it’s quite similar to the blind bounds of excitement others ascend to in the midst of playing violent video games. The rush of falling in and out of enemy territory, of danger and safety, from being a predator to becoming the prey, of victory and defeat, of chasing death only to be comforted by one’s remaining life – because in reality, you're safe and sound in front of a screen.

Also, in other cases - rollercoasters, horror movies, extreme sports, etc...

Yes, the wish to trip in and out of control isn’t limited to the realm of lust but is present in most aspects of life. We find it in extreme cases such as drugs, gambling, gaming, relationships, and in other subtle cases of professions and work.

If you don’t like it, that’s your business, and I wish you the best of luck in lust elsewhere.

On another note – and such another warning and disclaimer – I want you not to accept my tales of lust as love stories. Personally, I think hints of toxic displays such as jealousy, obsession, and possession in a partner are natural – but – a difference is made when such feelings become restricting to a degree you no longer feel free. I implore you to make such distinctions for yourself when regarding yourself – and, in extreme cases, when regarding others.

In said regard, I do not condone the events nor the actions of the characters in my stories – neither offender nor victim. Don’t allow yourself to fall prey to toxic partners! The signs are always there – keep a weathered eye out for them.

And no, I’m not blaming those who’ve allowed themselves to stay in toxic relationships. I, myself, am guilty of that. But I won’t excuse my poor judgment either. You know when something doesn’t feel right. We shouldn’t blur the lines of right and wrong in the name of love – or whatever else we may lend our self-control to – such as religion, culture, family, societal pressure, etc...

You are in control. Don’t forget it. And don’t allow anything else to become the case.

#nightmare rambles #discussion

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sugar-grigri · 2 months

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Have you seen Fami's right ear ? Because I haven't.

The game of interpretation in reverse, or focusing on what seems to be avoided by the chapter, not shown, works! and even if it doesn't work, it's still fun and leads to wild theories, which I love to imagine. And this post is no exception to that rule.

We had chapter 155 where we interpreted backwards to find answers to Denji and Nayuta's existential crises.

We also interpreted backwards to better understand the inconsistencies in Yoshida's behavior and the implications for chapter 156.

In my opinion, chapter 157 is no exception to this rule. Focusing on what the author refuses to show in order to find the answers fits in well with a mangaka fascinated by cinema.

Not convinced? Chapter 156 ended on Asa's legs, like a superhero ready to take on the big bad alone. The next chapter directly contradicts what it had already demonstrated. But why? Because you shouldn't trust either the author or the way the characters present themselves to you. That's what this whole chapter is about.

What matters to you may not necessarily matter to the characters. Our focus on the first page would be on Asa's missing arm. Yet she brushes it aside, as if she were dismissing our concerns with a wave of the hand: what's important to her, strangely enough, is wearing her uniform!

Which raises another question... have you seen much of Asa without her uniform? Yes, we've seen her without it, but more often than not, it's her fetish outfit for readers.

I could tell you that, once again, this is to emphasize the fact that we don't have the same temporality on the characters, and that Fujimoto insists more and more on what he refuses to show, but I'll be accused of over-interpreting, so let's carry on.

Fami's statement that appearing to be a high-school student is the best cover for me immediately brings to mind a specific public hunter, who also appears always dressed in his uniform! But people will tell me that I'm being too defensive of this character, so.... Let's continue even further

Asa manages to turn the guns on those who were going to shoot them, all by imagining that she had been able to redeem them.

It's precisely because she's disconnected from reality that she's able to create the illusion that her power works

And I repeat: disconnecting from the events we see in Chainsaw Man helps us too.

Asa is able to create weapons without even needing to touch them, i.e. to touch the concrete, the agent who watches over them is right to recognize her but wrong in believing she's there to help the church members in the basement, when in fact she's there for Chainsaw Man. It's normal for him to think that!

Because that's how she was presented on TV!

Which shows what? That you can't trust everything you see

Just before, we had a focus on Asa's legs, particularly through her walking, the fact that she's almost running

Let's interpret this in reverse again. Did you see Fami's hands? Yes, we see them, but never up close and never open.

What was important was obscured by the fact that, at the end, it was noted that she did have something in her hands, but the chapter focused on Asa's legs, even though she had slipped.

Pay no attention to what was emphasized to guess what happens next

In the title, I'm talking about Fami's right ear, because she is abnormally shown on the same side throughout the chapter.

Because it's hiding an earpiece? I'd have liked to, but I don't think so. As someone pointed out in the previous post: you can still see her ear on page 2.

The point is not to think that Fami is tilting her head to hide something in her ear, but why is she shown so much the same way?

The fact that she's bent over reminded me of chapter 140, when Denji visits the CSM church for the first time. At the end of that chapter, Barem presents an ultimatum: which side is heavier? Chainsaw Man represented by that cable on Denji's torso or his peaceful life with his family?

The chapter 140 is called "Scales", evoking the weighing of these two choices, and Fami, who is supposed to represent the church, is already tipped over.

Why? Because the choice has already been made

Denji chose to be Chainsaw Man, but when he realized it, he was faced with the fire in which he lost his cat and dogs.

When he transformed, he found himself endangering his little sister Nayuta

The scales tipped in Chainsaw Man's favor, to the detriment of his family.

The way Fami was always presented on the same side was to make it clear which way his head was tilting : to the left.

Okay, but how do you explain Fami's head being tilted the other way in other earlier chapters? It's normal, Denji's choice is very recent! He hesitated until now!

All this makes even more sense with her Chainsaw Man earrings, which represent cables.

And then you'll tell me "it would work if she had a cable earring on the same ear, but it's safe on both ears so it doesn't work", yes it does, trust us, we'll carry on.

When does Asa fall in part 2? Often when death is near, almost like a bad omen announcing it. She falls crushing Bucky, she falls with Yuko who later dies prematurely, she almost falls when her mother sacrifices herself...

So death is near.

And two things can explain it :

Fami is bent over to symbolize the fact that Chainsaw Man has been chosen over his peaceful life.

The chapter again emphasizes that Asa can save Chainsaw Man by attacking Chainsaw Man, because Chainsaw Man prevents Denji from having access to his peaceful life, hence the fact that Fami is bent over.

But let's think about it another way: in chapter 155, Denji emphasized the fact that he didn't know what a family was, having committed patricide, how could he possibly understand this notion?

Denji killed his father, his brother, his sister died for him...

So Chainsaw Man has always put his family at risk, which seems logical given everything we've said.

But remember that in this same chapter, we found an answer: Chainsaw Man is an empty shell filled with the people he loves, his family, and his aim is to protect them.

When Denji says he wants to be Chainsaw Man, it's to protect his family, who fill him as an empty shell.

When Fami says we must kill Chainsaw Man to save him, she's right.

Maybe not because there are 2 Chainsaw Man, since Pochita and Denji are inseparable.

But because to protect what has filled Chainsaw Man's heart, you have to kill the source of his misfortune, himself.

And that's why it all works, even if Fami's two earrings are cables, because even killing Chainsaw Man, the empty shell, saves what filled it - his family.

That's why Asa falls, because the end and Denji's sacrifice are close at hand.

But second interpretation.

Remember, when Asa falls, it means that death is near. So.................. who's next to her?

Obviously, this is pure theory, but I find it amusing.

Why does Fami only show one side? Because she didn't present herself well.

If Fami has insisted on anything from the start, it's that we call it Fami, not Famine. Why is that? Because she renamed herself just as quickly as Yoru did, choosing a name that hid her true identity.

Remember how Yoshida told her she was terrible at choosing names, to which Fami retorted that she didn't care if anyone found out who she was?

Is that really the case? Wasn't it to reinforce the fact that she was supposedly the devil of famine?

The first time Fami appears, in Asa's school, she introduces herself as the war devil's big sister (= true), which she does again at the aquarium, introducing herself as the famine demon (= false), called Fami (= true).

But as we've seen, you can lie about a devil's name, just as Fami did with the fire demon, presenting him as the devil of justice.

So what's to stop her from lying about the fear she represents too?

I know it sounds crazy, but what happened when the devil of eternity appeared? People were hungry!

And the first time Fami didn't intervene, the more time passed, the more the hunger grew, the stronger the demon seemed to become.

What's to stop the devil of eternity being the devil of famine?

You : "it's a tactic for Fami to use the power of the demon of eternity to starve them out". Yes it's true! But my theory about the wrong choice of devil names is possible too. The trick is not to say that what's been presented to us doesn't work, but to try and question it.

The famine devil falsely called the devil of eternity could be defeated by Denji twice: in part 1, because he had overcome the famine by becoming a public hunter

In part 2, because he fed Asa!

If Fami has insisted on anything from the start, it's that we call her Fami, not Famine. Why is that? Because she renamed herself just as quickly as Yoru did, choosing a name that hid her true identity : the Death Devil.

So, since the answers lie in what we can't see, what's stopping Fami from tripping Asa?

Which explains Asa's shocked face.

But above all, it implies that his fall was not an unintentional one, as it always is when death is near, but that it was caused by death.

So if we line up the interpretations: death doesn't want mankind to disappear.

How do I know this?

Because she said so! She loves pizzas.

Death wants to kill Chainsaw Man to remain the sole end of beings. To stop it, all you have to do is eat her.

#csm 157 #chainsaw man #csm #csm part 2 #csm spoilers #denji #asa #asa mitaka #yoru #famine devil #fami #nayuta #yoshida hirofumi #We're moving away from pure analysis I'm trying to theorize because I think it's fun!

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actual-changeling · 4 months

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I have written many meta posts and s3-theories, and read even more, but I got hit by an idea I have not seen before. (If there is another post, please link it!)

After vibrating for an hour and losing my mind in my dms, I have no scraped together enough brain cells to present what is probably my first actual 'main-plot meta'.

Welcome to another edition of Alex's unhinged meta corner, today with a title to honour Crowley's James Bond obsession and the possibility of another heaven heist.

I give you:

From Jesus with Love - You Will Live Twice

Now, let's get right into it.

I think Neil might have told us more about the main s3 plotline in the announcement article than we previously thought. We all got stuck on 'they're not talking'—for good reason—but it is the part before that which has been bugging me ever since then.

The plans are going wrong—and this time that is a problem for earth and humanity. Turning that around, it means that whatever that plan consists of would be the way to go and beneficial for everyone, the opposite of the main plot of s1.

"They need to prevent the Second Coming (SC)" is pretty much the only and most popular idea I have seen, hundreds of fics and metas and whatnot have been written about it, but I think there's a good chance we're wrong. If we're not, well, I will honestly just be happy to be watching season 3.

Whatever the Metatron is planning will have negative consequences for everyone, or as Michael puts it: "And so… it ends. Everything ends. Time and the world is over, and we begin Eternity… forever and ever."

It sounds very much like Apocalypse #1 - Same Old Plan, same expected result, yet if we look at different interpretations of scripture we find that the SC is not entirely about complete destruction and death for all of humanity—it is about creating a new world/migrating to the kingdom of God.

This is taken from the Wikipedia article about the SC

Resurrection and life in a world to come are a direct contradiction to the result Michael is explaining—total annihilation of humanity.

Now, I am neither religious in any way nor have I ever received any sort of biblical education. Luckily, Christians seem to love talking about the bible because there are dozens of bible website to wade through. If I get anything wrong, please point it out, I have never touched a bible in my life.

So, after reading many, many quotes by a bunch of different guys, I tried to create a somewhat coherent picture of what the SC might look like based on the assumption that the end result is positive. I will talk about how they can be interpreted more in-depth later, otherwise this would turn into a string-net very fast.

Additionally, we can also see where these points overlap with the statement Jimbriel gave in the bookshop in episode three.

What is Jesus' job description?

only God knows when and how exactly it will begin/happen, no one else does, including Jesus and the Metatron

a lot of different catastrophes are mentioned or quoted as something Jesus said, like earthquakes and storms -> Jimbriel mentioned a tempest and great storms

there is also the line "All these are the beginning of birth pains." Birth pains dictate that there will be a birth—birth of the world to come perhaps?

dead people will be resurrected/leave their graves so that they too can be judged (I'd say participate in it but that sounds like the Second Coming is a summer camp activity)

there are also mentions of stars and the heavens in general falling from the sky and the sun going dark -> Jimbriel also mentions darkness as one of the signs

great lamentations, as Jimbriel says, are also a part of many different passages, with humans mourning the world as it was

the Lord will descent with the voice of an Archangel and the sound of a trumpet/the trumpet of God; the grammatical structure of that sentence seems to be interpreted differently depending on who you ask, but the voices of angels/an Archangel and some sort of trumpet are common terms

once everyone is in heaven/wherever the 'main even' will take place, a judgement call will be made for every single person in relation to the book of life, which decides whether they will be punished forever or not (one passage talks about a lake of fire and mentions it several times in a row)

And this is where it gets tricky. To figure out what the SC looks like, we first need to understand a) what the Metatron's capabilities are, b) what he has to lose, and c) what exactly would be a threat to him.

If you ask me, all of this comes down to the Metatron wanting to stay and be in power for eternity with full control over angels so he can do as he please, aka keeping the system running as it is.

We know the book of life (bol) is a thing in the Good Omens universe, whether it does what Michael said is an entirely different question. So far, we have also only got confirmation that hell collects and tortures souls—in such large amounts that they are understaffed—while heaven looks completely empty.

The Metatron runs heaven as an institution, he seems to be the highest power any of the angels have access to and the one they defer to. He refers to himself as the voice of God and combines judge, jury and executioner, making him one great celestial dictator.

From what we know of hell, they do things a lot more democratically, having different councils, dukes, and ranks that are responsible for different levels of command.

We also know that that the Metatron wants the world to end, his goals can probably be summarized as the statement Michael makes, which would leave him in charge without any opposing forces.

We also also know that he sees Crowley and Aziraphale as a threat—why exactly remains a mystery for now—and that the success of his plan hinges on having a Supreme Archangel (SA) he can control. Gabriel decided to become princess of hell and Beez' sugar baby, so he was out of the equation, and after the Armageddon disaster, I don't think he wants to risk failing because of an unfamiliarity with earth (plus, y'know, getting our two idiots away from the plan).

It's interesting to me that right at the end, he says to Aziraphale "We call it the Second Coming"—call, not it is or it will be, CALL. We know that nothing Neil writes is a coincidence, definitely not with such an important line.

Just because you CALL something a specific name doesn't mean it IS what you call it, e.g. Aziraphale calls Crowley a foul fiend when we know he very much isn't.

The Metatron is selling his plan as part of the "Great/Ineffable Plan", so any questions can be blocked by saying it's God's will, it's ineffable. Whatever his plan is, he hides it behind the concept of the Second Coming, which angels know just enough about to understand the basics without having in-depth knowledge of what exactly it entails.

It is a good fucking strategy, I'll give him that, and it WORKS because angels—even if they have doubts—do not question. They simply don't; fear of punishment and millennia of conditioning have left them in a horrible place. When they encounter something unknown, their response is "I already knew that" as to not ask questions.

Crowley questions, we know that, and Aziraphale, ohhhhh, Aziraphale ALSO questions, but he does it in a less dangerous and obvious way. The Metatron is vastly underprepared for that.

(Side note: That alone would be its own meta post, but the gist is that he questions heaven's plans and then adjusts his assumptions of what God might want to what he WANTS God to want, e.g. Job, the Arch)

To summarize everything I just said, the Metatron wants to do what Armageddon failed to do—destroy earth and the universe—so he can be supreme dictator of all remaining celestial beings and gorge himself on power.

But instead of calling it his Big Evil Plan, he calls it the Second Coming, making everyone play along without resistance.

We cycle aaaaall the way back to the sentence I quoted—the ACTUAL plans are going wrong since the Metatron's would mean total destruction.

But what is the SC supposed to be if not the Apocalypse 2.0?

When I look at all the different aspects of the SC and assume a positive outcome, then the end result to me would be a new world that is pretty much like the old world, or maybe even literally the old world but with any destruction reversed. Heaven and hell get dissolved since now that everyone has been "judged", they as institutions are no longer needed, they have fulfilled their purpose.

No more judgement means there is no reason to keep track anymore, so why do you need to run celestial corporations whose only job is doing exactly that? You don't—and THAT is what I believe is the biggest perceived threat to the Metatron, losing full control over everyone and everything, losing his position, his title, and whatever else he has.

On top of that, Good Omens has told us again and again that God doesn't seem to give a fuck about good and evil anymore, and that without heaven and hell being all wrapped up in it, humanity would have 100% free will without any consequences.

Maybe the BoL is empty, maybe it isn't real, maybe Jesus stole it to straighten a wobbly table, who knows. There is a chance it is what Michael says, but I would admittedly find that a bit. too obvious and boring since it would boil the plot down to "they save their own asses again" and not "they save humanity at all cost".

Regarding Crowley and Aziraphale's role in this—I have Thoughts TM but those definitely need their own post. In short, they have to get the SC back on track, the real one.

If you have made it this far, thank you for working through what I hope are more or less coherent rambles. Any spelling or grammar mistakes are my own.

Questions? Thoughts? Corrections? Expansions and additions?

Feel free to add to this post however you like (and I can't believe I have to mentions this but if you clown on my post or behave like an asshole you will be blocked).

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lutiaslayton · 5 months

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Hey everyone! Just thought I'd make a quick post to let you know that...

The complete, definite, will-not-be-edited-again-in-the-future, FINAL translation of London Holiday, is finally here for your enjoyment!

AND it comes this time with an in-character fan-translation that DOESN'T read like Google Translate!

For those who didn't know, Professor Layton and the London Holiday is an official prologue to Diabolical Box; it's a short slice-of-life story in which Luke and Layton are just having some good time solving puzzles, and at the end, they receive the letter from Schrader which starts the events of DB. This game is not really lost content per se, but it's still part of the more obscure Layton media, since we non-Japanese fans have no legal way of playing it ourselves unless we buy the Japanese version of DB.

This isn't really some breaking news or anything, but I still thought it was worth warning you that this is it -- if you wanted a fancy in-character translation, you finally have it!

I will make a small shoutout to @call-me-rucy who helped every now and then with the more accurate translation when I had doubts on how a few idioms here and there were meant to be interpreted. Thanks again for your help, and sorry for using you like this xD I do wish I could send you DMs for reasons other than just asking for your Japanese knowledge hahaha

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When I say that this won't be edited again, I mean that the only way this web page will ever be further edited in the future is if someone else shows up at some point and asks me to change something. Perhaps I took too many liberties in the fancy fan-translation compared to the original text in one or two specific occurrences, or perhaps someone will want to translate this transcript into another language that isn't English, in which case I would absolutely accept to add it! (and you would be credited for that additional translation, obviously)

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I heavily suggest you take a look at it if you haven't already, because it provides quite a bit of lore and funny/wholesome moments! We notably get the full story of how Schrader heard about, and then tried to acquire the Elysian box (...story which contradicts the fact that he would already own it in Eternal Diva, by the way), but it's not the only fun lore crumbs this prologue to DB gives us :)

Also, for the fans of the puzzle theory -- I suggest you take a look in particular at what Luke says when he solved puzzle 09. It sure is intriguing that he would mention walking from island to island on foot as if he were... Physically doing it?? Or at least had the impression that he could experience it somehow???

Heh, puzzles and hint coins have mind powers anyway, for all we know perhaps some of them can trap you inside your own mind for a bit while you're solving them. Deliciously horrifying, so much potential for fanfics/comics and lore analysis. So shameful that nobody would have thought of taking advantage of this by throwing puzzles at someone with the specific intent of slowing them down by trapping them in a trance for a bit. smh, Level 5. smh.

#professor layton #london holiday #professor layton and the london holiday #diabolical box #professor layton and the diabolical box #professor layton transcript #layton preservation #lutiasgithub #still thought I'd tag DB as well since this prologue is related to it and provides some Schrader lore #pl puzzle theory #pl theory board

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aeithalian · 1 year

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Rick. Buddy. Amigo. Explain something to me. Real quick, I promise.

[The Trials of Apollo: The Tower of Nero, Chapter 4]

Good genetic package, Rick/Apollo? Are you sure about that?

Listen.

Estelle's physical description *clap* makes *clap* no *clap* sense. Why on earth does one of the only fully human characters in this series have to have unique and weird physical traits? Also, it makes no sense in the larger scope of Rick's writing style to have chosen this unless he had some sort of larger intention behind it. Not to mention the theories by fans haven't really done much to fully flesh out any perceivable reason as to why this might be:

Poseidon blessed Sally when she was pregnant - By far, this is the most believable to me, but it's still eh, because this feels very weird and I don't get the vibes from Poseidon that he would have done so to the extent that it shows up in Estelle's physical traits. Also if that were true, it doesn't make sense for Rick to just fully drop it in the story without the intention to flesh it out further, because to my knowledge he doesn't have plans for another novel that takes place after ToA.

Paul isn't Estelle's father - Firstly, this is out of character for Sally, and this doesn't fully justify why Estelle has Percy's eyes. PLUS, salt-and-pepper hair still wouldn't be natural for a newborn

Paul is Poseidon in disguise - This explains her traits the best, but Paul's character is so much more satisfying if this isn't true. It's also total bullshit.

Enter me. I have a theory. Yay. But first, we must discuss.

Firstly, I want to talk about her eyes. Going back to the theories, and based on my fair amount of knowledge of genetics (clarification: I write this as I procrastinate studying for my final genetics exam), the eyes are mostly interesting because Apollo specifies that they are immediately similar Percy's. The thing about eye genetics, though, is that they are what we consider to be 'complex traits', meaning that they are influenced by the interactions of multiple genes from both parents. What I mean to point out here is that Sally could definitely have the genes to produce two children with 'sea-green' eyes, considering her canonical eye color is blue. We don't know what Paul's eye color is, which makes my job a whole lot easier because I can assume that it doesn't directly contradict the possibility that Sally just has really strong eye genes (?). ALSO, who's to say that Poseidon didn't just change his eye color to match Percy's when he was born? Ah, yes, the perks of having a shapeshifting dad who seemingly loves you and your eye color a lot (but is still absentee, WHOOPS).

But what I actually found the most interesting about Estelle was her hair color. More specifically, the fact that Apollo says he's never seen an infant with that color hair. And we know Apollo is somewhat of an unreliable narrator (although this rarely affects his descriptions of people other than himself, and has also mostly evolved into a more honest narration since the end of book 3), but I believe we're supposed to trust this dude who just so happens to have been alive for over four millennia. Based on Apollo's previous descriptions of his own powers (see his conversations with Percy in TTC, when he pulls a Mufasa and basically admits to seeing everything the light touches), we know that Apollo knows and has seen a lot of stuff. So, how is this the first time he's seemingly witnessed this type of hair mutation?

I did some research, as one does. To me, it seems as if Estelle has what's called Griscelli syndrome, which is a type of rare autosomal genetic mutation that typically results in phenotypic hypopigmentation of the skin and hair. (It can also result in neurological disorders and immunodeficiency, based on the type, but I digress.) It's also pretty rare, considering both parents have to be carriers, and even then the child still has a one in four chance of being affected. Current statistics from the NIH say that Griscelli syndrome currently presents in less than 1000 Americans, and is rapidly fatal in 1-4 years without aggressive treatment.

That sad note aside, it's weird to me that the way Rick wrote Estelle's physical description makes it seem as if Apollo had never seen anything similar. I feel like a god of both medicine and knowledge would probably be a bit more up to speed with rare genetic disorders, especially because he's so old. The only explanations are that Apollo, in his mortal state, can't make a diagnosis, OR what he's seeing isn't actually something he can diagnose.

FURTHERMORE, from the same chapter, Apollo says something that muddies the waters even further:

It doesn't make sense that Apollo thinks that Zeus would take such an interest in Estelle. Her nature alone doesn't make me think that the king of the gods would take a sudden interest in a literal newborn, regardless of how much Apollo loves her (and honestly, I don't blame him).

What I think? Rick pulled the strings just tight enough that he has a very interesting plot point to go off of if he ever decides to pick up the pen again and write a new book.

What I think? Estelle doesn't have Griscelli syndrome, she is in much more danger than anyone realizes, and Apollo's subconscious put this together from the second he saw her.

Actually, let's rewind. I'm in the process of writing a fic (stay tuned!) and I had a random thought: do the Greeks have an apocalypse story? You know, like Ragnarök in the Norse mythos, and the Revelation stories in the Bible.

The answer? They don't. I guess that's what you get when the Greco-Roman gods are fully immortal and literally can't be killed.

That didn't stop the rabbit hole, though, and what I found was actually very interesting and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I give you: Hesiod. More specifically, his poem Works and Days. More more specifically, his 'ages of man'. More more more specifically, the iron age.

For context, Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who lived in the 8th century BC, and was walking right along with Homer in terms of fame at the time. The poem Works and Days is actually more of a really long Facebook post where he complains about anything and everything, especially in his section on the ages of man.

In summary, Hesiod wrote about what he perceived to be the five stages of human life since the creation of mankind by Zeus' hand:

gold: perfect in every way, pious, and blessed by the gods

silver: real bitches, the ugly middle child, so Zeus killed them

bronze: were so violent they wiped each other out

heroic: golden child, contained the heroes of the Greek mythos

iron: middle-aged men still living in their mom's basement

Hesiod wrote his poem during what he perceived to be the Iron age (it's really just him complaining about being born in the wrong generation), but he ends up listing a lot of qualities: 'everyone works too hard, the gods hate us, nobody respects family values anymore', blah blah blah.

I know what you're thinking: Tia, what does this have to do with an apocalypse?

Well, dear reader, bear with me. You see, every time Zeus didn't like an age of mankind, or it became too violent, or it generally wasn't pious enough, Zeus wouldn't hesitate to destroy that race and start over. Basically, an apocalypse.

So, you may ask a new question: what is the criteria for Zeus to destroy the Iron age? And, assuming that this is the age we're currently in, what would it take for Zeus to destroy everything our beloved Riordanverse characters know and love?

My friend, that is where Estelle comes in. Yes, a baby.

Take this excerpt regarding the Iron age:

"And Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men also when they come to have grey hair on the temples at their birth."

I think you see where I'm going with this.

My theory? Estelle, in her unique position as a bridge between not just the mortals and the demigods (eg. her relationship with Percy), but also the mortals and the gods (eg. her great impression on Apollo), is a living, breathing prophecy. A prophecy that the end is nigh for this current age of mankind.

Furthermore, I also think that Apollo made this connection, somewhere in the back of his mind, the very second he realized that her hair was entirely unique. According to Hesiod (who Apollo also mentions later in the book, so we know he knows who Hesiod is), the day that babies are born with gray hair (or, salt-and-pepper for the sake of the theory) is the second Zeus basically get the go-ahead to commit genocide.

This also brilliantly explains why Apollo suddenly, and seemingly without reason, makes to keep Estelle's existence a secret from Zeus, because he knows that it might be the easiest way to get everyone he knows and loves killed by his own father for "the greater good" as I'm sure Zeus will put it. Plus, in his mortal state, Rick didn't have to explain why Apollo did what he did, since Apollo's been having memory issues since the beginning of the series: why would he remember one line from a poem written almost three thousand years ago?

Frankly, Zeus doesn't care about mortals: the only reason he really cares about anyone is if they have enough power to threaten his own, or if they have some sort of power he can benefit from. This, certainly, falls under the category of the latter. Wouldn't you want a chance to remake humanity into the perfect image that it used to be? You would, if you hadn't gone through a five book long grow-a-conscience speedrun like our lovely Apollo over here.

Fortunately for Rick, this is such an outrageous theory that if it never comes to fruition, I won't be surprised. If he ever writes something similar, though, know I called it first.

EDIT: here's the fic i mentioned i was (am) writing

EDIT: a masterlist of my other metas

#riordanverse #trials of apollo #apollogists #also that fic i mentioned will definitely be including this #estelle blofis #theory #fan theory #also if you were wondering my genetics exam went well thanks for asking

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dulcesiabits · 5 months

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your shadow under the illusory moon, p.2.

summary: out of everything he's done in his life, it's his relationship with you that haunts lyney.

notes: 2k words, fic, first part, childhood friends au, spoilers for lyney's backstory, the first part has the most context for this fic

Lyney has always believed in miracles.

In Sumeru, there’s a particular theory about a cat in a box. Until you open the box, the cat is caught in a state between life and death; in other words, it is both, at once. A living contradiction, a miracle of its own, as long as the box is closed and the truth is unknown. There are things in this world that require a similar layer of belief. Anything can be manipulated and falsified. Perspective can change the very nature of an object. Not everything that is as it seems.

Of course, there are patterns and rules to miracles. Like any good magician, Lyney knows all the right tricks to create the perfect stage for such a miracle to bloom. However, there’s also an element of randomness to any event, unpredictable factors that can change the course of a life.

The bouquet in his hands is one such factor. A simple collection of flowers, pink cyclamens and tender red columbines, tied together with a string. For the past few months, similar bouquets have appeared in his dressing room.

“You’re nervous,” Lynette comments.

He twirls the bouquet airily. “Why would I be? These are just… presents from a fan, after all.”

Lynette throws him an unimpressed stare. “Right. But it’s not just any fan, brother. I think it’s obvious from all of your little research that the person who sent these is–”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Lyney interrupts. His palms are clammy, and he carefully places the flowers back down on the table. “And if, and only if, they were the one to do this, I don’t think they’d be happy to see me.”

Lynnette purses her lips, but says nothing else. He knows what his sister is thinking, just from the unimpressed flick of her tail: he’s a coward. There’s nothing he can say to that when she’s right.

But how can he be brave when the person he has to face is you?

—

In rare moments alone, Lyney tumbles through his memories like a kaleidoscope, peering up at each brilliantly colored piece of halcyon days, long past. All of his most beautiful memories always involve you: his childhood friend, his first love, a fellow ragtag orphan running through the streets by his side.

You were the cleverest child on the streets, and Lyney had been honored to call you his friend. His favorite memories involve the summer, when you, he and Lynette would sneak down to the beach to roll up your pant legs and step into the surf, shrieking as it washed over your ankles. You would collect shells and set up crab traps, digging for mollusks and building elaborate castles that the tide would wash away.

On one such day, Lynette wandered off to check the crab traps, giving you and Lyney a few minutes alone. She had shoved him with her elbow, reminding him to make the most of the time she had generously allotted for him, ears twitching amusedly when he stammered and turned bright red.

Though Lynette always pushed him to make a move, at the end of the day, Lyney was delighted just to be by your side. You were his precious family, no matter the nature of your feelings.

“This is pretty,” Lyney murmured. He’s holding what looks like a drop of starlight in his palm, a smooth piece of red glass. The two of you had been digging through the surf for a little while now, searching for little trinkets and treasures. Mostly you and he would pick up shells, seaweed and odd bits and ends the water rolled in. On rare occasions, you might find a coin that someone dropped.

“It’s sea glass,” you informed him. “Broken glass bottles get worn down by the water and sand until they’re smooth like that.”

“You know so much,” he said admiringly.

“I read about it,” you said. You beckoned him closer, then dropped another treasure in his palm, a piece of green glass. “You can have this. I thought you’d like it.”

He fingered the drops of sea glass in his hands. “We need another piece.”

“Why?”

“Because we need a third piece,” he said. “For you.”

You smiled, childish joy breaking across your face. “Really? Okay.”

“It’s like a miracle that we found these treasures today,” Lyney said. “Maybe we were meant to find them.”

You shook your head, and you have that look in your eyes: the one that made you look older than you really were. “There are no such things as miracles, Lyney. It was only a coincidence.”

You walked leisurely along the beach, your shoes in your hands, tracking footsteps across the soft sand. After a beat, Lyney hurried to keep up with you, his own footsteps like lovers next to yours. The tide would wash them away, but for now, these were proof that the two of you existed.

In hindsight, Lyney has always been a little jealous that you can look at the world in the way you do. To you, everything is neat and simple. You only believe in what you can see, and once explained to him that there are rules, patterns and calculations that govern the world. The truth is a single immovable force. There are no miracles or contradictions.

“What you see is what you get,” you had said. “You can only trust your eyes.”

But that’s where you’re wrong, he thinks. There are countless lies in the world, a bevy of facades and mirages and deceptions. Even the truth is never quite so simple.

After Lyney was forcibly separated from you, his days dulled, colored with desperation and fear.

The noble that took him and Lynette in would never let him see you. In that house, he was kept on a tight leash. Freedom was always just out of his grasp, hindered by watching eyes and hidden threats.

“You can’t associate with orphans like that anymore. But if you do well, perhaps I can take your friend in, too,” the noble purred.

A lie, of course, but he had been young and desperate and naive. And then Lynette was stolen, and the noble murdered, and Father became their next caretaker.

“You have to let go of your past or you won’t survive,” she had warned. “The only family you have now is the House of the Hearth. I don’t want to hear talk of this friend again.”

And yet, Lyney clung to you desperately. Throughout the training. Throughout the cold, bitter nights. Throughout the distrust and the initial bullying. The memories of your time together provided warmth that he held tightly to his chest like a star. As long as he could get through this, then he could see you again. Everything would be made right with the world, and it would no longer feel as if his chest was being torn to shreds every second he was away from you.

Lyney needed leverage, a plan. No, he needed a miracle. Because only those with power had the right to do what they wanted in the world. Hadn’t he learned that, time and time again?

“Father, there’s someone I know that would be an invaluable asset to the Fatui,” he posited, once he had enough successes under his belt for Father to find him useful. “They’re clever, and skilled with their hands.”

Father smiled thinly. “And are you asking me this for my sake, or yours? Not just anyone can become a Fatuus. Could they survive here?”

He had bit his lip so hard he tasted blood.

Because how could Lyney do that to you, for his own selfish desire to keep you close? He couldn’t bear the thought of you suffering from injuries that were so common in their line of work, of never knowing whenever this would be the night you wouldn’t make it home, of you always living despised by the people around you, just for who you had to associate with to survive.

And worse. What if you were sent off to someone like Dottore, who treated his underlings like pawns and experiments?

You had built your own life, from what little he had heard. Information about you was ferreted out in coincidences. To investigate you directly would be to put a target on your back, so he could only hear snatches of your name through association with the more important people and places around you. Last he was told, you worked at the Fontaine Research Institute, and had made a decent name for yourself as a mechanic. Could he rip you away from the tranquil life you had created, and thrust you into a place like the Fatui?

“Why don’t you just talk to them, Lyney?” Lynette had asked once. “Enough of these games.”

“And what if they don’t want to see me, Lynette?”

She sighed, and he dipped his head.

He’s a coward, but Lyney can’t touch you with his bloodstained hands. He doesn’t deserve to love you anymore, because of the things he has done– of the things he will do, for Father’s sake. You live in the sunlight, and he lives in the shadows cast by your light.

Lyney finds himself thinking of you when he wanders into a little trinket shop one day. There are rows of handmade bookmarks, and the sight of it reminds him of how you used to always have your nose buried in a book. On a whim, he buys one, keeping it tucked in his pocket like a secret, a connection that tethers the two of you together.

Maybe if things hadn’t gone so horribly wrong, he would be by your side right now. The two of you would live in a little home together, and be a real family again.

But dreams were just that: dreams. In the end, there are some miracles even a magician can’t make true.

–

When Lyney steps into the dressing room and he comes face to face with you for the first time in years, his mind goes blank.

You watch him like a wary animal, and his breathing quickens in his chest. He can’t do this. Not now. Not ever. The years are cruel, because even though you’re older and more tired, he can still find traces of the friend he once knew more intimately than his own self.

“Why, hello there. Are you a fan? I didn’t expect to see someone back here,” he finds himself saying. Even off the stage, Lyney finds himself slipping into a mask. He watches himself from an audience seat, performing a part for you.

Have you been okay? He wants to beg like a child. Have you been safe? Has anyone hurt you? But none of those thoughts pass his lips throughout your conversation with him.

When your attention wanders, it’s easy enough for Lyney to carefully spirit away your bag, and, with shaking hands, slide his bookmark into it.

When you turn to go, he can’t help himself. “Did you enjoy today’s show?” Lyney asks.

“I could understand why people like your magic shows so much.”

“But do you like them?”

You tilt your head, considering his question like you would a math equation. “Well, I don’t really believe in magic. But I appreciate the effort and the logistics behind each trick.”

“I’m glad, then.” A knot of tension loosens in his chest. It’s confirmation of what he’s known, from searching for you in the crowds for the past few weeks when he first realized you had been showing up at his shows: that despite everything, you were still watching him. His first audience member, and the most precious one. “Have a nice night.”

When you’re gone, Lyney collapses onto the dressing room table, hands shaking as he grips the wood, so hard his knuckles turn white. Your bouquet remains, and he brings the petals to his face, breathing in the fading fragrance.

There are things in this world that can never be truly repaired or forgiven, like how a shattered bowl will always bear memories of its cracks, or some animals hold grudges for the rest of their lives, remembering the face of their tormentors.

But Lyney believes in miracles. In the unexpected, in the unpredictable, in the contradictory nature of the world. And one day, maybe a miracle will bring him back to your side.

#liya writes #genshin impact #lyney #genshin impact lyney #genshin impact x reader #x reader #lyney x reader #lyney is the most conflict avoidant man in the world fr #i felt like the first fic was somewhat incomplete so!!! i figured writing about lyney's perspective (equally biased) would help that #i love tormenting him <3

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sylveon-official · 2 months

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Huskerdust mpreg wip 3

Part 2 here!

Lucifer chews on the finger of his glove as he mumbles, looking back and forth between Angel perched on the bed and the ultrasound pictures in his hand. Charlie sits beside him in an unwavering show of support, but the nervous shake of her hand clasped in his isn’t really helping.

“Ohhh. Mmm, okay, I see. Oh boy… again?”

“Again?” Angel and Charlie cry out, shooting worried looks at one another.

“What the fuck do you mean again? This happen often? Isn’t not being able to get knocked up supposed to be, like, divine punishment around here?!”

Of course, Angel had always considered that logic a bit backwards, especially with his profession. He had no idea how demon biology really worked, but he’d seen enough visibly pregnant Hellborns of myriad genders in his time in Hell to be secretly grateful he’d never had to worry about it. Well, until now.

“Well, yes…” Lucifer scratches the side of his cheek, gaze nervously flitting from side to side. “But, you see, from time to time we have experienced… let’s call them… little miracles, here in the Pride Circle!”

Angel scoffs, about to reply with scathing comment about the contradiction when Charlie places a steady hand on his shoulder and gently cuts in, “When is the last time this happened, Dad?”

Lucifer blows out a breath, and tuts his tongue as he counts on his fingers. “Oh, maybe 1000 years ago? Give or take. Doesn’t happen so often, could probably count the amount of times it has on two hands, but —?”

Angel groans. Lucifer or not, this guy has a way of beating around the bush that Angel sure doesn’t appreciate.

“Come on, cut to the chase shortstack - Why?” Angel asks, exasperated.

Charlie reprimands him lightly with a gasp of his name while Lucifer zeroes in on him with a narrow glare.

“I’m going to chalk that one up to hormones, and let that one slide.”

When Angel simply shoots him a dull look, Lucifer quickly gathers up his broken ego and carries on, this time in a more serious tone, “Listen, I wish I had an answer for you kid, but… I’ve never really been able to figure it out myself.”

Angel quickly deflates, sudden heat building up behind his eyes again. Great. Not only is he the first pregnant Sinner Demon in a Millenia, but he doesn’t even get an explanation?

Apparently sensing his downturn in mood, Charlie squeezes Angel’s hand and pries further, “Dad, if this has happened more than once, there has to be something you know. Even a just a theory?”

Lucifer hesitates, fiddling with his cane. “Well… there is one I’ve considered, but… don’t put too much stock into it,” he explains defensively, and Angel looks back up at him, tentatively intrigued.

“So, you know how conception happens… up there, right?” Lucifer cups his hand around his mouth and whispers conspiratorially.

Angel furrows his brows. “No, how the fuck should I-”

“Oh, um!” Charlie cuts in, her own brow furrowed in thought. “Something about ‘built-in’ birth control, right? You and your partner will only conceive if it’s something you both long for. So romantic!” She swoons, pressing her cheek against Angel’s shoulder. She quickly rights herself to add to her father’s assessment, “So if that’s how it works with Redeemed Souls, then maybe… maybe it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Heaven or Hell, since now we know that’s a total crapshoot… maybe it has to do with the goodness inside of the soul itself!”

Angel’s eyes narrow as he parses the words in his head, refusing to acknowledge the latter half of Charlie’s rambling.

“So lemme get this straight… you’re tellin’ me, this is literally some ‘when two people love each other very much’ kinda bull shit?! Who the fuck would I—”

Angel’s voice gets stuck in his throat as a very clear image of of the potential culprit poofs into his mind's eye.

Luckily, Lucifer and Charlie take his short-circuiting as general shock. Charlie coos and pulls him close while Lucifer backtracks, “Like I said, it’s just a theory - I’ve got no proof to back it up. For all I know, this is the Big Whatever Upstairs’ way of fuckin’ with us—”

Angel stands up, ignoring the way Lucifer flinches as he towers over him and Charlie face-plants onto the bed without his support.

“I gotta go,” Angel says, balling his hands up into fists, nails digging into his palms uncomfortably.

He swipes the photos from off of his desk, throws open the door and briskly walks down the hallway, Charlie’s worried shouts falling on deaf ears.

He takes the stairs to the lobby two by two, picking up his pace so he doesn’t lose his nerve by the time he reaches his destination.

When he stalks up to the bar, heart pounding and out of breath, Husk simply glances up from the glass he’s polishing and plasters on a teasing, lopsided grin, just like he's done every time Angel has stormed up to his bar at any and all hours of the day and night.

Husk cocks his head and lifts a brow, the deep timbre vibrating across the walls, “Wanna talk about it, Legs?”

Angel’s heart thumps and his cheeks flood with heat.

“Fuck.”

#lmao using worldbuilding as an excuse to explain the mechanics of mpreg #sh #i already kNOW #huskerdust #husk x angel dust #angel dust x husk #husk hazbin hotel #angel dust hazbin hotel #angel dust #mpreg #writing

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